Thoughts on Theonomy & Christian Engagement with Culture | Ligon Duncan

We're back with another episode of the Room for Nuance podcast. I'm Sean with my guest Luke Duncan or as his friends call him.

Dr. Duncan Brother, will you ask for the Lord's help as we get started? Let's pray Heavenly Father Thank you for the privilege of having a conversation this way that not only involves a couple of friends

But can bring in hundreds of other friends into that conversation We pray that it would be glorifying to Christ that it would help build a church that it would encourage

Pastors and church leaders and that you would give us help in Jesus name. Amen.

Amen We typically like to start the show just by asking people to share a three to five minute version of their testimony

Would you mind doing that? Sure. Yeah, I grew up in a wonderful believing home.

My mother was a Southern Baptist from East, Tennessee Okay, who had done

She she did her university work at the State Baptist College in Tennessee Carson Newman and then eventually went to Southern Baptist Theological Seminary to do a master's in church music and then doctoral work at Northwestern and then she had directed choirs in Baptist churches in North Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia and Was called to be the music professor at Furman University, and that's where she and my dad met

They met on a blind date Dad came from a he was an eighth generation Southern Presbyterian ruling elder

So I had a Southern Baptist mom and a and a and a Presbyterian dad and actually as a young child

I was taken back and forth from First Baptist in Greenville to Second Presbyterian in Greenville, but eventually was reared under a really wonderful faithful Minister at Second Prez a man named

Gordon Reed who had a huge impact on my life I My mother was always my theological conversation partner and she was wonderfully

Theologically read and articulate and so when I had theological questions, I typically talked with her

I've been talking with mom about what faith is what repentance is what?

Regeneration is etc. Probably from the time. I was five or six years old when I was 10 what

I actually did is I we had a Communicants class at our church where the pastor would take young people 10 11 12 13 14 years old through a

Gospel he would do a different gospel every year at the end of that time if they felt that they were ready to make a public profession of faith

They would be examined by the elders and then they would make a public profession of faith

And I went through I think I studied the gospel of Mark with him one year And at the end of that time, even though I had a number of friends in the class

I really didn't feel like I was ready to make a public profession partly because I knew that it would please my mom and dad and I knew that that was not a good reason to make a public profession, so I didn't and That for that was that was maybe early fall of one year that next summer.

I always spent a Month in Titusville, Florida with my grandparents my my mom's mom and dad and they were faithful Southern Baptist members at First Baptist in Mims, Florida and that summer

Billy Graham did a Evangelistic campaign in Orlando and I listened to him preach all night for like all week for like five nights in person

Yeah, not over the radio. They would take me we were not skipping to jump away from yeah. Yeah. Okay, so that Really had an impact on me just evangelistic direct

Preaching and the pastor of their church was a man named Joe right

Meyer who was a dear friend of Adrian Rogers Yeah, and and so I went to Pastor Joe and just asked him to talk with me about the gospel and he walked me through The gospel and when

I went back home at the end of the summer, I said I want to do communicants class again with mr

Reed because I think yeah, then I'm ready to make a public profession So I did community we went through the gospel of John that time and at the end of that time

I thought I'm I understand this I understand the gospel and I'm ready to make a public I was 10 10 so That you know, and again the

Lord put my mom my dad my pastor, you know Godly grandparents a faithful pastor in Mims, Florida all these things in my life helped me

Receive the Word of God one plants and other waters. That's right. The Lord gave the growth Yeah, and how did you a become reformed and be lamentably become

Presbyterian? I Told mark You know what?

They really I was digging I was digging through I was digging through some a box of memorabilia

That has had probably been unsealed for years and I discovered my baby dedication from first Baptist Greenville, South Carolina And I said

I sent a picture of it to Al and the mark, you know, and they did the tear emoji back, you know

Yeah, you were do you were yeah Yeah, it's I Always would have been inclined to being

Soteriologically reformed. Yeah because of my conservative evangelical Presbyterian upbringing and because mom frankly mom knew more theology

Than dad did dad was a late. He dad caught on to reading later in life.

Okay, and and and mom she was always a reader you always a teacher always a professor and She had probably been reared under a moderately

Calvinistic pastor in East, Tennessee. Okay He which would have been more common for yes

Spurgeon a lot. You can't quote a lot of Spurgeon without getting the theology of grace

Coming through and so so reform soteriology was never an issue Okay, and so that was you know, that was that was sort of the fountain

For me. I also I memorized the shorter catechism of the Westminster Confession, which is a beautiful Reformed soteriology laid out in its presentation of the word o salute us and those sort of things

But I didn't understand those things experientially and I my story is I struggled with assurance from 10 to 14

Partly because I was I was I was a confused Calvinist I was actually our minion in my theology of assurance and I heard a pastor preach on Ephesians 1 at a youth conference and it dawned on me

That before I had ever reached out in faith to God He had reached out in grace to me praise

God for that youth pastor. Amen You know Yeah, and that was it was like the lights came on that now

I if I had if I had understood the catechism that I had memorized I would have already run that but Experientially that wasn't a reality until I heard it from Ephesians 1

Of course, that's how we all we want to get our stuff from the Bible You know as wonderful as our confessions and catechisms are

I remember Sinclair Ferguson saying it makes all the difference in the world if you believe something because you read it in Berkhoff or Because you read something that you believe something you read in a man, right and that is a weakness of our reformed world

And so that was huge for me and experientially right then the the the theology of grace

It just it was hugely important to me. And so From that time on I was very conscious of being reformed now in those days

It's not in the happy days like we have today You know, I know there are all sorts of hard things today but let me tell you this here's here's one way that it's super different my you know,

Greenville County had 346 Baptist churches and probably 11 Presbyterian churches, but there was not there was not a

Southern Baptist Calvinistic Congregation in the county and in and and though maybe

Calvinism might have been beat up here or there in a passing comment Southern Baptist in the 1960s and 70s

We're not paying attention to Calvinism because it just was not it was not it There was not even a blip on the radar screen.

So my my Baptist friends were by default Arminian, yeah, they were they were they loved the

Bible they cared about evangelism. They cared about the church

They cared about missions They were a little worried about me that I might be a liberal because I was

Presbyterian and that was a pretty good guess in those days because most of the Presbyterians that they knew would have been theologically liberal but I You know,

I knew from the time 14 on I knew I'm I'm I'm reformed and so part of what I did is tried to make sure that I didn't that that didn't end up being the main thing that I argued about With my with my

Baptist friends really wise of you Well, I wanted I wanted them to believe the Bible because one thing that was happening was that in in many of their institutions the

Bible was being undermined colleges the Baptist seminaries and So I wanted them to believe the

Bible so that that if we're gonna get an argument, let's get an argument at the Bible Let's get an argument about Jesus. Let's get an argument about the gospel

And so that that was my MO because when I went off to college I was at what was still then the

State Baptist College of South Carolina Furman University and the the challenge there was the religion department was trying to talk impressionable young Southern Baptists into rejecting the theology that they had heard preached by their own pastors and Their own pastors may have been

Arminian and I might have been a Calvinist, but their home pastors did believe in the Bible They believed in Jesus and they believed in the gospel.

And so my I was a member of the Baptist Student Union there And and and my whole thing was don't reject the theology that your pastor is teaching you back home

He believes in the Bible. He believes in the gospel. He believes in the deity of Christ. So I had those kinds of relationships, though.

I I knew I was soteriologically reformed And again there there wasn't there were there was a small reformed fellowship at Furman University, but not very big

Yeah, mostly was not Southern Baptist because you had the the Baptist Student Union had most of the engaged

Baptist kids there and and they weren't there was no there was no Reformed resurgence going on right in those days.

It was in those days It was that I didn't realize it but that was sort of in the middle of the battle for the

Bible in the in the 1970s Harold and Zell writes battle for the Bible and then eventually you get the

Council on biblical inerrancy So Calvinism wasn't the thing it was it was the

Bible and then basic Apostles Creed kind of Christian doctrine Was was what

I ended up talking with my friends about incredible I'm just taking a note because I don't want to forget to ask you about certain things that I'm thinking of as you're talking

Okay, so I did something a little different for your interview. I went on our room for nuance page, and I said who here loves

Ligon Duncan and everyone said we do and then I said And then I said what are some questions that we absolutely cannot forget to ask so I'm going to start there and then if there's time because Luke will kill me if I don't do this, we're going to get to the regulative principle super thoughts on the last five years in evangelicalism.

You're a historian. You see the way things shift and move over time. Yeah, yeah, you know,

I actually the way I group it timeline is really back to two thousand and twelve. I think

I think shy. If you read shy lens timeline in his his book, I really think he captures it well.

I think we've been in a disorienting time in Evangelicalism and some of that has been the political and cultural

Polarization that we're living for images getting into the church Yeah And it has and so in some places the church has just been co -opted by their left or right

Yeah And is a pawn in the in the hands of forces that don't care anything about Jesus don't care anything about theology

Don't care anything about the gospel. Yeah, but they have an agenda It's a political agenda or a cultural agenda and the church is simply the handmaiden to that and that That has driven some of the polarization.

Yeah Are you hopeful? Oh, I am because I mean you you look out at this conference

You've got 11 ,000 young people that could be doing anything over their winter break Yeah, and they're here and and I when

I talked to them that you know You think number one a missions conference really 11 ,000 18 to 25 years old are gonna come to a missions conference but when

I talk to them they say and and they're involved in in organizations, they're involved in crew and Intervarsity and campus outreach and all these other organizations out there and what they say is the content of this conference is

More substantial and better than any other place I go and and I'm thinking okay

And when you're here because you want substance you want Yeah You know and that just makes me happy and the thing is

I meet I meet this all over the world because of my job I'm on every continent about once every 18 months.

Yeah, and And it's this is there everywhere I go. Yeah, and so I'm very hopeful about that.

I think I think 2024 is gonna bring us another season of discontent yeah

And and polarization don't care Jesus is gonna win

God's working a plan out They're a good day As long as we can get people to really care about the

Bible and really care about theology and really care about the Great Commission yeah, the other things will pale in comparison because when you think about the the things that we have gone through that are part of This polarization then you look back over the 200 years of this country

There have been other times when far more catastrophic things have been divided. Whatever. Could you yeah, this is the most of us yeah, yeah, and and so I I think as long as we are discipling a

Generation in a deep commitment to the sole final authority of Scripture. Yeah to robust historic biblical

Christian theology to an absolute commitment of the Great Commission Yeah, everything will work out it

I don't know how what the timetable of that will be but the church needs to be discipled

By the scriptures and by the church not by the world and we're just struggling right now

With people that are that are trying to play the hand of being we're the real Christians But actually importing a worldly outlook and wanting to disciple the church on the left and the right on the left

All right, and we just need that. We're the Bible guys. We're the theology guys. We're the Great Commission guys

Yes, and it'll you know, I don't know when when we'll get through this period but we will and The the young people that come to RTS that come to Southern that come to Midwestern and I could go down Wonderful Institutions where the

Bible is believed and theology is sound They they know they're out of step with their culture.

Yeah, they know that and So they've already Taken a step to being marginalized

And they're okay with that and and and that that's an old guy like me

That's very encouraging because my my contemporaries We were living in a time where there was at least outwardly evident church growth in our culture a

Lot of that was nominal. A lot of that was superficial But because of that we we bought into worldly aspirations.

I'm going to be pastor of a big church I want to have a big salary I want to drive a big car live a big house and that sort of thing and you know

My young people come come to seminary there They know that that's not their future their future may being a bivocational pastor

Yeah, their future may be planning a church in a bombed out You know department store, you know dying small town, you know, yeah, and they're up for that.

They just want to be faithful Yeah, and that can't but encourage me when I see it I was talking with a mutual friend of ours recently and I was asking him about a

An issue in our cultural moment and he was like, yeah, I'm in India right now with 500 pastors who?

Have no idea what you're talking about But they're going out and risking their lives every day for the gospel and even as a historian you think back

I mean Aryan ism I mean several centuries of darkness will the deity of Christ prevail in the church

So this little cultural flare -up in in light of history in light of what's happening all over the world

There's it's not it's not a big reason to be discouraged and I you know I get it these kinds of cultural turns that we're living through and we're living it through a cultural turn.

What happens is Christians have historically Gone different directions and how to navigate those cultural turns and I can show it to you it kind of every age and stage and in every sort of Geographical area of the globe and you look at China I mean one one reason you have the three self churches and you have house churches is

Christians turn took a different turn and how do you deal with communism? Yeah now I'm not commending one as as as equally good as the other but I'm saying

Christians when when they're faced with these kinds of totalizing Influences and demands from the culture

They will tend to go a couple of different directions in how they try to navigate that and we're seeing that Right now and the you know, the big thing in our culture.

It's gender marriage and sexuality That's that drives so many things in our culture right now whether you're gonna be accepted whether you can be employed

You know things of that nature Wow speaking of gender and Family and stuff related to that.

Should we abandon the term complementarianism and start using the term patriarchy?

I think complementarianism is a better term than patriarchy for the very reason that the term was chosen in the first place

I get that the term is a recent term and I think I think John Piper and Wayne Grudem and Mary Cassian sat down One night at a at a at a hotel in in outside of Wheaton, Illinois and came up with hey

That's gonna be the term that we go with So I but what what they were trying to say is there were already people that were into Patriarchy in the bad way that we see it out there today

There were already people like that around and they said they want to say no. No, we don't want to use Patriarchy like that because we're not trying to baptize misogyny.

Mm -hmm and You know an abusive authoritarianism and all this kind of stuff

We're we're we're trying to express What the Bible says about the way that men and women are to relate to one another in marriage and in the church

Yeah, and and so I still think the term is a is a good term But the key is of course that we are teaching the truth from Scripture and it is going to be

Uncomfortable to teach that truth from Scripture no matter what terminology you use in this culture.

It's sort of pick your poison Yeah, because people it does not matter how far you bend over to be

Helpful and bring people along It's like no good deed goes unpunished in in this area.

Yeah, and I you've probably seen the thing Kathy Keller tells the story in in her in in one of her little books that they disciple this young woman along at a

Redeemer Church in New York and Complementarianism is one of the things that they teach as part of the core teaching of the church and this woman gets ready to join

And she says now wait Do we have women as pastors and elders here and Kathy said well, no

I mean we were Convictionally we believe in in qualified men to serve as pastors and elders and the woman looks at her right in the eyes and said

I feel like you just told me that my father was a child molester Wow You know, so it you know all of that careful slow

Right Discipleship bringing somebody along and and you're looked at like you are a monster

And so it doesn't matter what you call it If if you believe what the Bible says, they're gonna be some people in this culture

Utterly offended by that and I my personal view about that is that means that you should never put it on the back burner

You need to be up front with you. Let me tell you the three things. You're gonna get fired in the interview Yeah, we do that in our church membership classes here.

The five distinctives were complementarian. We're cessationist. Why do you know? Yeah, because we what we don't want is for you to join the church in a year later be like what what yeah

Okay, since you brought up Kathy Keller our our brother Tim Keller has gone to be with the

Lord Man, what a loss Praise God for all the fruit that his ministry has born.

You don't have to agree with him about everything to appreciate his ministry Colin Hanson's biography was superb very useful and understanding

Why Tim did a lot of what he did the way he did it but You are one of the people who's had

I think two debates with him on the floor of the General Assembly I've only I've only listened to one and it was several years ago, but can you speak at all to Tim's life and legacy, especially as someone who has had to you know

Go kind of not really go to the ground with him, but debate him about things that that you disagreed on right?

You know, I'm a I'm a Late comer to Tim that we had occupied the same, you know tiny, you know, we're our little corner of the

Shire Yeah, you know the PCA is we're tiny compared to to the Southern Baptist world or the larger evangelical world we had occupied the same territory, but Tim Tim's about 10 years older than me and It was that first debate on women deacons and deaconesses that brought us together

And I've always in like I would rather have a debate over things that I deeply care about and disagree

Upon with a friend rather than someone that I don't like. Yeah, and So it was a real blessing to be able to have that conversation with Tim and but he kind of didn't debate you

Right, he showed up and then he was like That's Tim's way, right? That's Tim's way.

I mean Tim doesn't like to be polemical. Yeah, that was just never he did Tim His his posture was always apologetic and evangelistic.

He was always trying to make a case for the gospel He was trying to strip away Objections to the gospel into Christianity and he was trying to reach out and persuade and brave is an evangelist at his heart

It was yeah, and so he was really uncomfortable in polemical settings. Yeah, he had strong opinions and well -founded opinions

And I I actually enjoyed arguing with him in private More than in public because he didn't you know when you're in public and you're a person of his stature

Everybody is listening for every nuance of what you say and they'll have a read on whatever you say

However, you say you're in private. You don't have to be careful that way and so, you know, I've been in a room with Al Mohler Mark Dever Tim Keller and me and Unbelievably candid

Interactions. Yeah, right and that was super enjoyable Yeah from a debate standpoint more enjoyable than being in a public setting

But what was you know, just like the first time I met Vern Poythress at Westminster Seminary unbelievably smart guy

But you meet Vern and you immediately love him. He just he loves Jesus He loves the

Bible and you just love the man. Well, I the same thing with Tim You just you meet Tim and you just you you talk to him for a little bit and you just I love this man

Yeah, I love I love the way he loves Christ You know when when you learn his story and and I do think

Colin really helped a lot of people come in. Oh, oh, that's That's where that comes from in Tim.

That's where that comes from in Tim That's where that comes from in Tim And I I knew a little of that because my wife went to Gordon Conwell a little bit after him

But she had the same theological experience at Gordon Conwell that Tim and Kathy did and so I got

I used to tell people If you want to understand Tim, you have to understand Gordon Conwell 1975. It's just everything whether it's

Loveless on dynamics of the spiritual life or whether you know, I go down the list of the people and of course

Especially Meredith Klein. Yeah, they had a huge impact on Tim But I you know so it was really good to be put in that setting because I think people thought that we were gonna come out, you know with Yeah with guns blazing and and a fist of cuffs and all of that and we had a really good enjoyable engagement that I think was clarifying and it ended up being unifying for the denomination and and then

We had several other public engagements like that But I tell you one of the great blessings has been the last seven years

I've taught introduction to pastoral and theological studies in New York City with Tim So next week,

I will teach it without Tim for the first time in seven years It's a really poignant thing for me and I'm actually be what this will surprise some people on this call

Whereas Tim started when we were teaching that course doing a lot of his cultural engagement stuff up front

He realized after the first group of students that most of our students were basically unfamiliar with reformed soteriology

So what Tim he put all these cultural engagement stuff aside and his one agenda in his lecture hours was to convince them of reformed soteriology

Wow and And and it and he also did a lot of stuff on call to the ministry that was helpful, too but There are a lot of people out there that I think that would surprise that would surprise them, you know

He set aside contextualization. Yeah, that's aside contextualization to go after Calvinism to make sure you understand grace.

Yeah, exactly Yeah, that's exactly right and so that was fun to be able to see him do that and to watch how he did that and how he handled objections and and that was one of the great privilege because I would sit in on his classes and He was a master teacher.

He remembered everything that he had ever read I've had a few professors like that in my life Tim's got that same thing

I had a professor in Edinburgh who remembered things that he had read 50 years ago He could tell you exactly where they were on the page.

Yeah, you get a paragraph quote. Yeah, almost exactly, right? That's how Tim is and so though Tim had never done a

PhD He had that kind of mojo Yeah for an hour just because of yeah because of his memory and because of his intelligence and And he was interested in everything.

He was always saying hey, have you read have you read have you read and he he was reading? So widely he was reading stuff that I hadn't read

Yeah, so he'd tell you need to read this you need to read this and so that was fun and we we interacted a lot text email phone calls

Over the last four or five years of his life and and that was a special privilege and he you know

He had admonitions for me along the way like when he when he knew things were going downhill With the cancer he said to me over a year ago.

He said Luke how old are you and I think at the time I was 61 or 62 and he said

Don't think that you have time and That was a really good and I'm not a person who takes

For granted the time that the Lord has given me, but that was a really good admonition to have from Tim So I got to be a little bit of a part of his life in that way that was that was a a wonderful friendship and and and though I'm you know in the

PCA if people would Associate me with the more confessional wing of the of the

PCA Tim and I had the most delightful Working relationship and we're totally on the same page with what we were trying to do with our students in New York City Wow, praise

God switching gears a little classical theism That's the argument.

We're having these days Where do you land on that? Yeah, I'm thankful for that.

I you know, I in in the 1970s and 80s Because the the big thing was just the battle for the

Bible So the doctrine of special revelation was a front -burner issue it was not uncommon for evangelicals to question all kinds of historic commitments to the

Christian doctrine of God that Catholics Orthodox and Protestants would have all agreed upon up until the 19th century

Sure, but the 20th century you had people jettisoning the doctrine of divine simplicity divine impassibility

Immutability, I can go down the list of things that that relatively solid evangelicals had thrown out the window and so the recovery of a robust historic and biblical

Christian doctrine of God Call it classical theism. It is a is a wonderful wonderful thing.

Yeah, and and and I you know, I've told Scott my President at RTS Orlando has been a big part of that his he's a

Trinitarian Theologian is written in that Zondervan series of short intro to Scott Swain Short introduction on the

Trinity. Yeah, I told Scott, you know Scott you you have made me go back and think about how

I've said Things in my doctrine of God course Yeah You know things that I've said for 30 years that I've wanted to try because of the insights that you have given to me

I've wanted to tighten up. Yeah, what what I was doing? I always had because I was confessional I was protected against some of the

Newfangled trends that were out there. Like I know, you know the People that were jettisoning impassibility.

I never bought that because I knew I couldn't buy that that's not confessional it's not a

Historic Christian approach to God, but the work of these younger guys and they're everywhere.

They're in the Baptist world They're in the Presbyterian world. They're in the Anglican world conservative Bible believing guys recovering historic

Christian doctrine, especially in the doctrine of God They've really helped me.

Yeah, and and I think set us on a good course. The reformers were pretty harsh on scholasticism

Some of the guys in this classical theism conversation are more friendly towards scholasticism.

Do you think that's just because of how kind of scarred wounded

The reformers were because of the the way scholasticism had run amok. That's good You know you will you will find a mixed report in the reformers on the scholastics

And it depends on which scholastic you're talking about room. So, you know Luther for sure Was completely fried with late medieval nominalism and look

I would have been to I'd have been over in the corner cheering go Luther go yeah So, you know the the late medieval nominalists come in for a lot of pounding from both the

Lutheran and the reformed That's still going on today, but there there are also scholastic theologians who the the the the reformers the first -generation reformers quoted with approbation and and and so, you know

Calvin was not trained in a classical theological Curriculum, he was a humanist trained.

I mean his his dissertation was on Seneca's Thesis on clemency

He had been prepared for law and then went in a different direction he he does not in the way that a

Petrus van Maastricht or a or a Francis Turretin or someone like that Cite The scholastics and such but you you can find in a pre you can find

Calvin citing scholastic opinion in an approving way And then slapping around the school men in other areas and you can find a little bit of that in just about all

The reformers so it was it was not a not necessarily a wholesale rejection of everything

I remember RC Sproul. I was doing this conference on the Westminster Confession before PCA General Assemblies back in the 1990s early 2000s and I invited

RC to give a lecture on the Westminster Doctrine of God and he he got up and here his

First sentence was something like this There is nothing unique about the

Doctrine of God in Magisterial reforms Protestantism in the 16th century in relation to Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy but the most unique thing about magisterial

Protestantism in the 16th century was its doctrine of God and That was such an

RC way to start a lecture Yeah And then he went on to argue that what what the reformers had done is

That they had worked out the doctrine of God in relation to all the other loci of theology

Okay, so that the sovereignty of God permeated the totality of your theology

Not just this little area of the doctrine of God in the Trinity. And of course that especially applies to soteriology, you know and but it also applied to things like ecclesiology and so in in an interesting way

RC kind of Anticipated what has happened in the last five ten years. Yeah all these young guys

Fascinating yeah, one of the things that I did not know that I learned from calling Hansen's biography of Keller was the connection of Keller And our

RC. Yes, what was the name of the place where they were? the

Ligonier Brother this is not meant to be like a clickbaity kind of move for the views question but so just all good know what's coming

I Genuinely want to know because I when I think what do I want the young men in my church

To be like what are we discipling them towards and I'm not flattering you. That's a sin

I think love Ligon Duncan doesn't move an inch on the gospel right doesn't move an inch on cultural things now

I know some people have disagreed with certain decisions sure, but you've made that's true of all of us sure, but also

Incredibly gracious incredibly Catholic, even in this interview the way you've spoken about brothers and sisters with whom you have minor to significant disagreements with I'm like that's what

I want for our guys and our gals thoughts on the

Moscow mood conversation. Yeah yeah. I really loaded that I think

Kevin did a service to us writing on that. I think Kevin realized that he was going to take a lot of incoming on that.

He told me probably a month or two before he was ready to to release that that he will.

He gave me sort of an early draft of it. I think that's a good warning to send right now.

I think there are there are some people in our culture today who are saying that this is the model of faithfulness lob grenades and and and I think

I think it's really good for guys like Kevin who himself Kevin's got back but right

Kevin is willing to speak into things that he knows are going to get people upset.

He's down for the fight. He's down for it. But that doesn't mean that you are the most faithful when you are lobbying the most grenades indiscriminately in every direction.

And when you are doing clickbaity stuff on you know, it's one thing to to LARP faithfulness and courage on social media.

It's another thing to do it in real life. And and you've got a lot of live action role playing going on in the social media world from guys acting like they're tough that put them in a room and you'd have them in a fetal position in three seconds.

And and that's it's not good for that voice to influence our young folks.

We are going to have to cultivate backbone but we're also going to have to cultivate a love for the world that hates us.

Bill Davis who teaches at at Covenant College says that the most common student question that he gets from his philosophy students is

Dr. Davis teach me how to love a world that hates me. And you know

I want them I don't want them to get any of their signals from the world. I want them to get all their signals from the

Bible. I want them to be faithful to the whole panoply of Christian doctrine. But I want them thinking how can

I reach out to this lost world. How can I love people that hate me. Not how can

I make them hate me more. How can I demoralize and demean them with every word that I say.

How can I drive them away from the gospel for the sake of branding and building my own. And even wound my brothers and sisters on the way.

Correct. Yeah. And so I think that's I really appreciate Kevin being willing to wade into that.

And I think underneath that is it's not only a mood there. There's a there's a theological view of the church of the gospel of fidelity and their problems at each of those levels.

Underneath that I'm about to ask you about Big Eva but because you are one of the patriarchs of it

I don't expect an honest answer from you. But let's just let's just play this game. OK.

Setting a low bar for me. Well I mean what do you think when people talk about this shadowy syndicate this big machine of Big Eva.

Most of the conversation that I hear about Big Eva is complete nonsense.

And it is funny some of the some of the biggest critics of Big Eva if there is a

Big Eva they're it. You know I could name organizations far larger and more extensive than the gospel coalition for instance.

Yeah. But boy do they hate the gospel that hate the gospel coalition. And they've got more money. They've got more reach.

They've got more. You know all in and they'll jump in on the Big Eva conversation. So a lot of it is just nonsense and I pay no attention to it whatsoever.

Now you know have have there have people been disappointed by leaders unwilling to take stands on important things.

Sure I'm sure that's happened. You know welcome to the fallen world. And I want us to be people of principle and sometimes that means calling out people that we love and care about.

But you can you can do that in such a way that is not. We have a culture in in a in a part of angelical right evangelicalism right now.

That is desensitized to its own spirit of mocking and slander and that's that kind of goes back to the

Moscow mood thing again. Mocking and slander is not a Christian way of dealing with anything, and so you know many of those markers and slanders.

I have no reason to even think they're Christians. Can I pause you out there? Well, because I know somebody from that world will hear you say that and go.

This guy doesn't know his Bible. What about the prophets? What about Jesus? Look at the way Paul talks. How would you respond to that?

Well, I mean, what one thing is Jesus was neither a mocker and or a slander. Okay, so when when and and if you by the way, if if if some of these folks had been around, they would have been going yay

John the Baptist Jesus, you're a weasel well, John is preaching truth to power.

Why don't you come out and say, why don't you go up to and say, Herod, you Fox? You know, why don't you be like John?

And I think one of the things the Bible teaches you is there are different ways to be faithful. If if if some of these people had been around, they would have been on Daniel like white on rice.

You're a sellout. You you work for the wickedest king in the world.

You are facilitating his wickedness and his ungodly rule. Yeah, Daniel is a high ranking official in a pagan empire with extensive influence in how the the empire works.

So in the Bible, you find believers in very different circumstances dealing differently.

Now, you know, is Daniel willing to go to the lion's den rather than stop praying to his

God? Yeah, but he's still working for the government. You know, and there's some people that call you out today.

Yeah, for for that. So I think that let's actually look at the

Bible and how the Bible teaches Christians to deal with culture. I invented a course for RTS called

Christ, Culture and Contextualization. It's a systematic theology course because I saw so many students going out and thinking about contextualization for the first time in their lives, not in the context of theological education, but on on the field and doing a really bad job of thinking about contextualization.

So I'm giving away the store in compromise. Some of them come up with bad ideas. So I wanted students to think about contextualization under the watchful eye of a systematic theologian and read the best stuff on that.

Because Max Stiles years ago convinced me that a lot of what has happened on the mission field in evangelicalism is driven by a bad ecclesiology of the local church and bad contextualization.

And so I had to teach that course for the first time this year. I forced it on my entire curriculum.

And so one of the things I did is I said, I wonder what key passages

I ought to go to, to look at these things. And, you know, obviously

Genesis 1 and 2 is a place that you're going to go. Obviously, Matthew 5 and the

Sermon on the Mount is a place, salt and light, that you're going to go. But what I was struck by is how much instruction there is, not just in the minor prophets, not just in Genesis, not just in Jesus teaching the

Sermon on the Mount, but all throughout the New Testament. Exactly telling Christians how to go about engaging with the culture around them.

Like the Titus 2 and 3, it's got all kinds of stuff about how you're supposed to engage with your culture, what attitude you're supposed to have towards the lost people around you and brothers and sisters and neighbors and all of that.

Even false teachers. Correct your opponents with gentleness. Exactly. And so I just started working through those passages with students.

And that's what we need to disciple. We need to disciple people with the biblical way of engagement.

And it's not always the same way. Sometimes you need a good cop and sometimes you need a bad cop. And in some cases,

John the Baptist was the bad cop and Jesus was not the bad cop. Now, there are certainly things that Jesus said that were very in your face and very direct, and they were often directed towards religious leaders who ought to have known better.

But when you decide to do that, you have to be very confident of your spiritual maturity.

And I see a lot of incredibly spiritually immature people, like people that I would not allow to disciple my cat trying to do that.

And so I want to go, do you know yourself at all? Do you have any self -awareness whatsoever?

Do you know what you're like? Would anybody in the world go to you and want to understand the gospel and Christianity, but you're going to be the arbiter of who's faithful and who's not faithful?

And so social media has encouraged us in that direction because anybody with a cell phone can opine to the entire known universe.

And so when, you know, I really, by the way, I think that Neil Postman's book,

Amusing Ourselves to Death, explains all of this. Now, the illustrations are out of date.

You'll laugh at them, etc. But he explains this whole dynamic 40 years ago. And when your vision for faithfulness and engagement is a food fight, you know, whether it's on television or whether it's on Twitter or X, then you're going to have a very different view of what it means to be faithful in relation to your culture.

And a lot of it is just feeding ego and a lot of it's envy. And again, a lot of it is driven by a desire to be important.

Very unimportant people who want to be important. Brother, you have a heart out at 740.

Let me ask you this. You will not hurt my feelings. I wanted to get your thoughts on theonomy. I doubt you can answer that in one minute.

Do you have another minute to answer that or should we just cut it right? Let's go. Let's go. I'm yours. You will not hurt my feelings if you say

I just got to go. You know, I wrote on theonomy as a young professor at RTS in the early 1990s.

You know, Greg Bonson wrote theonomy and Christian ethics while he was a professor at RTS Jackson in the mid 1970s.

I did not know that. And so theonomy was a ground zero kind of issue when I came to RTS Jackson.

And so I had to develop a lecture for it in my ethics course. And that eventually became a book, which

I finished in 1995 or 1996. But by that time, theonomy was already in retreat in reform circles.

And so I put it on the shelf and I thought this will never be relevant again for the rest of my life. And then behold, you know, for the last seven years or so, you know,

I see the zombie coming out of the grave. With force. And so I actually,

Jonathan Lehman reached out and asked if we could republish some of that material in the Nine Marks magazine on reconstructionism.

I said, absolutely. And I realized I need to address that again. So I would say that theonomy and the larger reconstruction movement around it was a well -meaning but misguided cultural overreaction to some theological things in American culture and to some cultural and political things in American culture.

I think that if you look at the time when theonomy is developing, Rush Dooney, North, Bonson, you know, the original folks that sort of spread the word, the dominant theology of evangelicalism in those days was dispensational antinomianism.

And so it's almost like, OK, we're going to do the opposite. And a lot of neutral public square talk.

Yeah. And then at the same time, there was a gradual rise of the sort of conservative movement in America through, you know, from before Reagan through Reagan.

The moral majority. And then the moral majority. And a lot of these folks ended up being advisors to some fairly significant public figures and politicians.

And I think there was a very optimistic post -millennial expectation that we're going to not only take back this country, we're actually going to establish, you know, a theonomic state.

We're really doing it. We're going to do it. The Puritans will be proud. There you go. And so that I think that was the background.

And I think what's happening now is that we've never been further away from that possibility in our culture than we are now.

And just like the abortion abolition movement, you know, Roe v. Wade gets struck down and suddenly there's an abortion abolition movement.

Where were you like for the last 50 years while all these evangelical pro -life people were out here, you know, scraping and clawing and trying to do what they could do to roll back

Roe v. Wade? Same thing with with Reconstructionism. You know, just like you were saying friends from other countries look at this like it like talk to your

Chinese friends. How impractical is this? It's utterly impractical in most parts of the world to even think in these ways.

And so, again, you can be really brave and you can have these really strong opinions and you can think you're really pure and you're the one true believer in everyone's midst.

And there's no possibility of this being implemented in any possible world.

Yeah. And so that's one thing that's going on. Theologically, theonomic

Reconstructionism is not a reformed view. They will go back and try and cite magisterial reformers and they will cite them incorrectly.

It is true that there was a shift in the 16th and 17th century

Reformation in its views of church -state relations and its views of how the

Ten Commandments were to be applied in society. And it is true that there was a shift from Britain to America in the reformed community.

So Baptists and Presbyterians were being thrown in jail in the American colonies by Anglicans and by Congregationalists.

They're being whipped. And Baptists and Presbyterians thought, you know, it's really not a good idea for Massachusetts Bay Colony to be a

Congregationalist establishment thing where we get thrown into prison or Virginia to be an Anglican colony where we get thrown into prison.

We actually believe in freedom of the exercise of religion. Yeah. And that's a good thing, not a bad thing.

It's not infidelity and pluralism. It's a good thing for the gospel because you don't want people having their consciences forced in the most important area of all of life.

And you've got all of the history of the religious wars behind that. And so there's a real sense in which

Protestants invented religious freedom. And in America, Baptists and Presbyterians really forged the consensus that came about on religious freedom.

And now you've got a group sort of wanting to call that into question. Let's go back to monarchy. Let's go back to state -sponsored persecution, et cetera, et cetera.

That's the way to be really faithful. And it's very childish to me.

It also feels like a visceral response. America, this thing that we've loved for so long that we felt in control of, we're losing that.

We're terrified. And listen, I get it. I don't want Drag Queen Story Hour any more than you do. But as good

Bible guys or the reform guys, we can't just say let's take America back.

That feels carnal. It's almost like theonomy allows us to baptize that instinct.

Well, now I'm trying to find theological rationale for this impulse. So I can actually say no.

Me fighting to save the country is a biblical thing. Brother, we could talk so much more.

You have to go. I'm so thankful, honored, humble that you would take the time to do this.

Let me pray and ask the Lord to bless him. Lord, thank you for our brother, Leg. Thank you for the example he is to us.

We pray that many, especially young men in the church, will follow his example.

A robust gospel backbone, but full of all the fruit of the spirit. Peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, self -control.

Lord, we pray that, yeah, that his ministry would continue to flourish.

That RTS would continue to train robust, zealous, joyful ministers for the gospel.

We pray that his time here at Cross will be fruitful. That every interaction that he has will bear some fruit in eternity.

We pray that you'll bless this episode, Lord. You delight to use the foolish things of the world to shame the wise and to use small things to create big fruit.

So we pray that you will do that in the name of Jesus. Amen. Amen. Let me record my immovable conviction that this is the noblest service in which any human being can spend or be spent.

And that if God gave me back my life to be lived over again,

I would, without one quiver of hesitation, lay it on the altar to Christ.

That he might use it as before in similar ministries of love, especially amongst those who have never yet heard the name of Jesus.

What I'm doing right now is appointed in the

Bible to have its unique place. It's one thing. It's called preaching. Do we have a

God who wants to be understood? Who is God enough to communicate in a way so that humans can know him, love him, worship him, and be saved by him?

Can it really be true that a faithful believer can experience all of these things?

And the answer to that question from the Scripture very clearly is yes. Why do we come to church?

Why do we hear the Word? Why do we read the Scriptures? We are looking for God. Are the words of Scripture actually what they're meant to be?

We're now at a point in time where people question whether Scripture is clear. What we are most accountable for is our handling of the

Word of God. We are called to faithfully preach the Word. At 10 of those, we want to serve the local church by equipping your church family with great resources that are going to point them to Jesus.

So we'll come and set up a pop -up bookstore in your church. There's no charge. We'll come for your

Sunday services. Maybe you've got a weekend retreat or a conference. We would love to come and then make recommendations.

This is one I've read three times now. It's called Incomparable by Andrew Wilson. And he goes through 60 characteristics of God.

It just wonderfully takes our eyes off the world, off ourselves, and puts them on our

Savior. Now we've got lots of things for families and kids. For parents,

I want to recommend this series. This one is Raising Kids in a Screen -Saturated World. Our passion is to get good books that hold to the

Bible, read by as many people as possible. We hand -pick our bookstore. It's curated so we know everything we sell will point to the

Lord Jesus. Everything's discounted. And as we make recommendations, we're seeking to serve your church family so that they may be excited and equipped to read good books.